TikTok has clarified concerns about its employees reportedly breaching the data of US users from China. The clarification comes after BuzzFeed News published a report about unauthorized data access, citing leaked audio from over 80 internal TikTok meetings.
TikTok to Handle U.S. User Traffic in Oracle Servers
TikTok emphasized that it has been working with Oracle to store US user data within the country. Furthermore, the company says it has changed the default storage location of US user data to the US, with the entirety of the user traffic routed through Oracle Cloud infrastructure. It also aims to delete private data from its US and Singapore data centers and completely rely on Oracle’s US-based cloud servers for backup.
“TikTok has long stored US user data in our own data centers in the US and Singapore. Our Virginia data center includes physical and logical safety controls such as gated entry points, firewalls, and intrusion detection technologies,” wrote TikTok’s U.S. Security Public Policy official Albert Calamug in a blog post.
“It’s also important to maintain backup data storage locations to guard against catastrophic scenarios where user data could be lost, and our data center in Singapore serves as the backup data storage location for our US users,” Calamug added.
According to BuzzFeed News’ report, however, the data migration effort, internally known as Project Texas, only includes data that is not publicly available on the app. That includes content that is in draft form, set to private, or information like phone numbers and birthdays that are not publicly visible. If you’re interested, you can check out BuzzFeed News’s entire report here.
